Some California Dems trying to flip the House are backing...

1of2House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has brushed off efforts by some fellow Democrats to put distance from her in their campaigns.Photo: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

2of2WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 20: U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other House Democrats listen during a news conference in front of the U.S. Capitol June 20, 2108 in Washington, DC. House Democrats held a news conference to discuss H.R.6135, "The Keep Families Together Act." (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)Photo: Alex Wong / Getty Images

Nancy Pelosi may be one of the nation’s best-known Democrats, but some California House candidates in her party have decided they would be better off attacking her than backing her.

“While I respect Leader Pelosi’s years of advocacy on behalf of California and the Democratic Party, it’s time for new leadership,” Gil Cisneros, who is running for an Orange County seat being vacated by Republican Rep. Ed Royce, said in a statement explaining why he won’t support the Democratic leader if his party takes back the House and Pelosi runs for speaker.

Democrat Andrew Janz, who is running an uphill race against GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare, has also said he would not support Pelosi.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) walks through a House corridor en route to a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 7, 2018. (Tom Brenner/The New York Times)

Photo: TOM BRENNER;Tom Brenner / New York Times

“I think it’s time for a new generation of leaders to go to Washington, and this is with respect to both Democrats and Republicans,” Janz said in a March interview with NBC. “I think the country, and my district in particular, is hungry for change.”

Cisneros and Janz are among a growing number of Democratic challengers in red or purple districts who are looking to distance themselves from the 78-year-old House minority leader, a “San Francisco liberal” whom GOP leaders love to demonize.

“With Pelosi as speaker, everything we’ve fought for will come undone,” says a digital ad the National Republican Congressional Committee began running in May. “Democrats will raise your taxes if they take back control of Congress — that’s what House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi now says.”

In contests across the country, Republicans are trying to tie Democratic candidates, many of them young, progressive and politically inexperienced, to Pelosi, who has been in Congress since 1987 and served as speaker from 2006 to 2010.

After Democrat Jon Ossoff lost a 2017 special election in Georgia under a flood of GOP advertising suggesting he would be a “rubber-stamp for Nancy Pelosi’s liberal agenda,” other Democratic candidates tried to inoculate themselves against similar attacks.

It also helped that he ran his campaign, in the words of a mine workers union leader, as a “God-fearing, union-supporting, gun-owning, job-protecting, pension-defending, Social Security-believing, health care-creating, and sending-drug-dealers-to-jail Democrat!”

Victory in politics breeds imitation, and Lamb’s success in turning his back on Pelosi is driving similar efforts by challengers in other conservative-leaning districts.

“It’s a way of addressing a potential vulnerability,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. “In a tight race, you don’t want to lose even a small group of voters” who may be put off by Pelosi.

Then there’s the money question. Pelosi is one of the Democrats’ most successful fundraisers, and much of the cash she collects goes directly toward helping her party’s candidates for Congress.

On Monday, for example, she was in Los Angeles for a star-studded, $25,000-a-person fundraiser that brought in about $4.5 million for the House Majority PAC, which is supporting Democrats in the midterm elections.

Democrat Gil Cisneros has sought to distance himself from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi during his race for California's 39th Congressional district seat in Orange County.

Photo: Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call,Inc.

Cisneros himself received about $2 million from the national Democratic Party, and groups including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee helped boost him past other Democrats in the June 5 primary.

“Now that he scraped through the primary with Pelosi’s help, Cisneros is changing his tune — (saying) new leadership is needed in the Democratic Party,” Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the Republican National Congressional Committee, said in a statement. “Gil’s craven political posturing is as laughable as it is pathetic. ... Gil took Nancy’s money; he owns her baggage — it’s that simple.”

But there are plenty of questions about just how effective the Republicans’ anti-Pelosi attack ads will be anywhere, much less in Democratic-leaning California, Pitney said.

“When I stand in line at the supermarket, I don’t hear people talking about Nancy Pelosi,” he said. “People who care (about Pelosi) likely have already decided who they are going to vote for.”

There’s a reason, though, why Republicans are convinced they can use Pelosi to drag down Democratic candidates.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll taken this month found that 45 percent of registered voters were less likely to back a congressional candidate who wants to make Pelosi speaker, compared with 21 percent who would be more likely to vote for that candidate. Thirty-two percent said it would make no difference.

Those are numbers that mean something to Democrats in tight races. Still, some California candidates say they have no intention of running from Pelosi.

Mike Levin, who is running for the seat being vacated by retiring GOP Rep. Darrell Issa that straddles Orange and San Diego counties, said in an interview this year that Pelosi was one of his political heroes and he couldn’t imagine a better speaker.

Others are taking a wait-and-see attitude, arguing that Pelosi isn’t even an issue in their race.

“This is what I hear about Nancy Pelosi: absolutely nothing,” Democrat T.J. Cox, who is running against GOP Rep. David Valadao of Hanford (Kings County), said in a television interview. “When I win and when we take back the House, that’s the point in time that I will look at who the leadership should be.”

As for Pelosi, she says she’s more concerned about winning back the House than what will happen afterward.

“Leader Pelosi has always enjoyed the overwhelming support of House Democrats, and that will continue into the majority she’s so focused on winning,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi. “Democrats don’t let Republicans choose our leaders.”

California is in the center of Democratic efforts to flip the 23 GOP-held seats needed to take back control of the House. Since that’s not happening without grabbing at least some of the seven or more targeted seats in California, Democratic leaders, including Pelosi, are likely to go along with anything that helps them get there.

John Wildermuth is a native San Franciscan who has worked as a reporter and editor in California for more than 40 years and has been with the San Francisco Chronicle since 1986. For most of his career, he has covered government and politics. He is a former assistant city editor and Peninsula bureau chief with The Chronicle and currently covers politics and San Francisco city government.